Drowsy Emperor

Why is no one talking about Rome II Total War? The game is coming out soon and looks nice: An obscenely expensive collectors edition is also going to be released: http://i2.cdnds.net/13/19/618x465/gaming-total-war-rome-2-collectors-edition.jpg

So you all want a cookie now, or what?

There's a lot of QA sweatshops around, so the conditions can vary depending on the position in the food chain, as well. Well... No good product today is made in decadent working conditions where everyone has space and without child labor. "The goals of the group and the greater race are transcendent, and to embrace them is to achieve enlightenment." Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter"

The net is flooded with reports of SSD unreliablity + they cost an arm and a leg per gig. Is it really worth it, considering that even average hardware outstrips the demands of most games now?

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I have an: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Radeon HD 3800 (half dead, prone to overheating) Intel motherboard EG965WH or something 2 Gigs Ram Can I do anything to upgrade this or do I have to buy a new one from scratch? Worst part is that this PC is still good for all the multiplatform and console ports we get, but newer PC based games won't run well on it.

Weird. From what I know of dev teams in Serbia and Poland, their working conditions are fine. I don't know why the situation is so bad in Ukraine.

So much for hopes for a Sid Meier kickstarter: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.408033-Dont-Expect-Sid-Meier-To-Mooch-Cash-Via-Kickstarter Nice deal: http://www.zavvi.com/games/platforms/pc/rpg-bundle/10804769.html

Who said most of Europe had a democratic tradition either? Spain and Portugal were dictatorships until "yesterday". Germany was always an authoritarian state, the Weimar republic's short lived existence is the best proof you need. But that's not what I was arguing. I was pointing out that Asian societies are nothing like the west even when they're formally democratic. Most are strongly collectivist, traditionalist with a strong element of subordination and accepting one's place in society - and the "fate" that goes with it. Etc. Etc. Japan is still an occupied country dominated by the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Forces_Japan When the US is gone I wouldn't bet a dime on Japanese democracy.

Gee, thanks! Just didn't want you to get your hopes up

If you imagine you share values with Japan I can only tell you that you're an idiot. The current form of government was created by US bombs and bayonets. It has nothing to do with the Japanese mentality, which like in all Asian countries, leans implicitly or explicitly towards authoritarianism in some form or another. Democracy is at best only formal in that part of the world. I see no reason why it should be otherwise either.

What we need is an AAA porn game to outclass and make obsolete in a single stroke every sex/nudity scene in games. It should feature a roster of characters from Kirby to Mass Effect to cover all possible tastes. New characters should be bought as microtransactions, and there should be anonymous multiplayer. ****, with this I'd be a millionaire in a fortnight.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, that is awesome news !!! But how do you know this? http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/04/25/skyrim-legendary-edition-outed-by-retailer Welcome back Dee Dee

I think a GOTY version of an ES game is inevitable and will probably cost about as much. I don't know what else you might get in it though.

What's the verdict on XCOM. Quite a bit of time has passed and I still see people disliking features and complaining about issues on the forum. That's not the usual state of affairs with a Firaxis game wait, what the hell, this Bureau game is a FPS?

Shadowrun Returns looks pretty nice on Steam

My my, this may be the second worthwhile thing to come out of NWN2. (MotB was the first) It'll probably be nice, BG1 is suitably generic in style and simple in structure to get a good fan made remake. I think the BG2 remake in the DA engine is a fool's errand though.

Nah, Mass Effect will very likely be played quite a bit over the next decade. It might even have a bigger impact on gaming as a whole. When I wear my Commander Shephard N7 shirt, middle school students know what it is. They have no idea what Baldur's Gate is. After Dragon's Age 2 I said that I am clearly not in the Bioware Wheelhouse anymore. But I'm not equating that to mean they are making terrible games. They are making games for a different audience, one that is much larger than us crotchety old folks, Boo. You might have an argument if these games got terrible reviews, but that doesn't happen. They sell well, they score well, and they are heavily polished. Dragon Age 2 reviews? ME3 ending fiasco? You weren't reading carefully. I was saying the Bioware brand name is declining in value faster than the quality of their games. Its an intangible thing, sure - but reputation is still important to a certain extent. First the EA thing, then DA2, then ME3 ending - not to mention the worst failure of them all - TOR. I might not have liked KOTOR, Jade Empire, Dragon Age etc, but they were undisputed hits in their time. There was no need for damage control back then, not nearly to the extent they need now. Now everything they do is disputed, even when they do it right (like ME3), partly because they're with EA and partly because they're screwing up in places they didn't before. Its an obvious trend. Where exactly it'll lead I can't say. And as Malcador pointed out, no AAA game gets bad reviews today. When you've sunk 200+mil into a project what's a million more in advertising to make sure all the major sites and publications are in your pocket.

By YOUR margin. By anyone's margin. Don't kid yourself that any of your other games will be as played a decade from now as BGII is. Not that that matters really, its all about the money after all. Still, it would take a fool not to see that the brand, more than the games themselves, is on a downward spiral - even among the fanatical idiots on BN. Ah, the heavy burden of fame. How quickly it goes from adoration to ridicule.

Why don't you make your own MMO that has features like open PVP, complex PVE and full loot penalties? It could be non-instanced and it should have several hundred end game options and\or raid challengers so that people don't get bored. I always get bored when I max my character level. I would support you with a subscription if you made this MMO? You don't have to support me with a subscription if you give me 200+ million dollars to get the job done.

And then it was cancelled. This is why we can't have nice things.

Finished a game of SMAC as Brother Lal of the Peacekeepers. Difficulty level: Thinker Rules: Do or Die, Blind Research Off I started right next to Sister Miriam and used my Unity Rover to conquer her only city straight away. I expanded with only 6-8 cities overall, and terraformed everything to forests. The other factions were constantly in conflict, while I kept the only adversary on my continent, Yang, at bay with bribery. I played it risky - not building any military units until late in the mid game. The result of this was that my tech and cities were incredibly advanced and I built most of the secret projects too. Not being content with that I built a huge energy park with 40 or so supply crawlers constantly feeding me more and more energy - at some point I had 600 energy per turn. This enabled me to buy a new base improvement or secret project every turn, staying far ahead in the technological game. When air power showed up I started cranking out the most advanced air force in the game - and just at the right time too. Yang, who had the largest army in the game declared war... and I promptly wiped out his troops with mu Needlejets. I took one city and made peace. I did that several times again later, keeping him at bay without bothering to defeat him outright. It was almost my undoing later when I neared the Ascent to Transcendence sequence when everyone declared war on me at the same time. My energy park was destroyed and I rushed the game to the end by building fleets of supply crawlers and sacrificing them to make minerals for the last tech. That's how I managed to rush the last project from 30+ turns to two turns. Final score 1500+, 150%+ high score in all categories.

Warhammer: Dark Omen I never played this game back in the day. Its a nice real time tactics affair, marred by unresponsive units that are hard to control in the relatively quick gameplay. Each mission has to be replayed at least several times because regiments aren't replaced between missions - and units are very squishy making the game very difficult overall. The Myth series did the same thing better, although Myth is smaller in scale. I'm halfway through and I think I won't be finishing it. Its become progressively harder and the story really isn't good enough to suffer the repetition.

I know what you mean. However, I'm somewhat interested in CCP's World of Darkness MMO. They're promising less combat and more politicking. I suspect that MMO's could be fantastic games, really some of the best ever made if the focus wasn't constantly on the statistics and combat. They'd have to be both complex and thematically mature (not in a **** and gibs way) - in other words slightly boring - to drive away all the juveniles too. And constantly policed as well. Its just not likely to happen considering how much more expensive they are to make.

Jesus, Africa never fails to disappoint in the horror department. Not that I don't like Africa, I did live there for 4 years.